My husband started a new job up in
the Northwoods of Wisconsin on July 8th of this summer. All of our belongings were moved into a
duplex the days before. Baya and I
stayed behind in our empty house for a week. We closed on our former house July 12th, and we
moved in with friends for my last week at my former job, before we made the
move up north as well.
Routine, resources – everything was
thrown out the window! I was
starting from scratch during the biggest season of my life, during the end of
my big build period, and right before my biggest races. Think triathlon in itself isn’t
challenging enough? I was already
increasing my training for a longer distance and to do the HIM for more
challenge. But wait, let’s have a
baby in there too. Oh, oh, and
let’s move! Yes, let’s move, and
start new jobs, and live in a new (super tiny) duplex. Let’s move up in coaching and now I can
start coaching Varsity volleyball and can have the season overlap with my race
season! Yes, and let’s leave all
our resources behind and move farther away from our families so they are even
less accessible for babysitting!
Let’s find a new congregation to worship with, and while we’re at it,
let’s just question everything in life, have Baya regress and no longer sleep
through the night....
Yup, this all happened. Sometimes I feel like if I could
survive this season, then I can face anything! (Perhaps even an Ironman someday?) Heck, if we weren’t planning on growing our family so soon,
then I might as well just do my IM next year already, after all, my new routine
should (hopefully) be established, and new resources (babysitters) will
(Lord-willing) be found, and I’ll have a whole new support system in place. If all I had to do was focus on
training, the IM distance just doesn’t seem so daunting anymore. (And this is coming from someone who
INSISTED that she was NEVER doing an Ironman. Yea, about that...)
Well, Baya is back to sleeping
through the night (hallelujah!), I’ve started working at the YMCA in
Rhinelander, the volleyball season is over half done, and I have only a couple
weeks left before my first marathon.
Somehow I made it through the end of my build period and into my race
weeks and the close of the season.
I had a couple grandma visits that sure helped with that. A bonus of being up in the
chain-of-lakes though is that I did get more open water swims in than what I
had been doing. I lost all my bike routes, and it's a bit tougher up here. With all these lakes, there are a lot of roads that dead-end. You basically have super busy highways (also tourist season up here), or else the side roads that don't dead-end and are paved, are very curvy without extra shoulder space (and often without lines). They both make me nervous.
At my former Y, I used to do a lot
of my running on their indoor track while Baya was in mini-care, but this Y
doesn’t have a track like that, so I sometimes resort to the DREADmill,
otherwise Baya and I have been hitting the trail a TON with the running
stroller. We live about a block
from a trail that has been awesome to do a lot of my running on. My long runs Andy has biked beside me,
while pulling Baya so I don’t have to carry water or anything with me. I’m back to riding solely on the
trainer, but only a couple times a week since I’m focusing on the run, and I’m
hitting the pool three times per week.
Baya has become more predictable in her naps, which makes it easier to
bike on the trainer, and mini-care at the Y has her while I swim. For the most part, she’s okay in the
stroller as long as I time it out with her eating and nap schedule. I made it up to running 8 miles with
her in it (that’s a long ways pushing a stroller!), and she slept for another
hour after I got back, so I guess if I was really crazy I could have ran
another 6 or so with her in it (trust me, I’m not THAT crazy).
Somehow it did all come together in
the end, and somehow I’ve found a way to keep on going. The weather has been a blessing, as it
has been a beautiful fall for running outside with Baya, but the winter will present
a whole new set of challenges. The
changing training blocks will present their challenges, and the track season in
the spring will be a whole new battle to take on. No worries though, I will continue to figure it out and
adapt. No excuses.
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